So, last weekend was Caitlin's third birthday party! Yes, I know, a lot has happened since my last post, but if I get into all that here I'll never get this post done, and I'll never get back into the habit of blogging again. A bit extreme? Perhaps, but probably true anyway :-)

Anyway, our little Caitlin pulled herself right past her third birthday - she's even replaced her cute little habit of holding up two fingers and stating "I'm Two!" with holding up three(-ish) fingers and saying "I'm free now! We had a big shindig in our new backyard, complete with bounce house, Cinderella cake, and takeout from Vallarta. Lots of her friends came - neighbors, friends from Early Start and Town & Country Farm School, local LP friends the Thompsons and Caitlin's favorite babysitter Ariel & family, and POLP friends the Cortez's from Oxnard, the Dinos from Arcadia, and the Moskovic/Erenea family all the way from San Diego!

It really was a blast to see everybody - our life has been so busy lately that we've really missed spending time with friends, and since we missed the national conference this year we've really missed our LPA family. We're working on plans for the D12 fall regional conference, though - we're really looking forward to seeing everybody there!

I tried to upload like 16 pictures for this post from Picasa, but i obviously haven't figured out how to do that correctly yet. Still, though, here are some pictures of Caitlin over the last three years - she's changed so much!!

Stay tuned - I don't have many pictures from this weekend (too busy doing the party, and not enough taking pics!) but I'll post a few tomorrow that pare' Stuart took from Sunday morning with Caitlin and Justin goofing around. See you then!

 

 

 

 

Sleep study - way overdue!

As they have been for most people, the holidays have been very overwhelming and I have barely been able to catch my breath, let alone update the blog!  Still, quite a bit has happened since my last post, so I suppose there's no better time than now to get this thing updated...

Caitlin finally went in for her sleep study on Dec. 20th!  Cherylle and I had been preparing for the worst after all the stories we'd heard - we were expecting to experience one of the worst nights of our life.  Because of this, we'd scheduled the study at a clinic in Bakersfield so we could a) leave Evan with his grandma while we took Caits to the clinic, and b) have grandma watch the kids in the morning while we finally caught up on the sleep we weren't able to get the night before.  

The first good sign came when we were given the directions to a Residence Inn to report for the sleep study.  No clinic beds for us!  We got to the hotel and were directed to the back of the complex to a two bedroom suite, where we met the tech.  She had set up her control center in the living room of the suite, with a separate laptop for monitoring each patient, and one for herself to stay occupied on the overnight shift.  There was already one patient checked in and (literally) snoring away in the other room when we got there, with a large bundle of wires snaking under the bedroom door and connecting to a computer, and you could see lots of little lines on the monitor moving up and down as he attempted to sleep.

As you can expect, Caitlin really was not interested in having lots of sensors poster-puttied all over her head, but they'd instructed us to not let her nap during the day, so she was too wiped out to really struggle.  She'd had one 15 minute power nap around 4pm, since we were driving across town from visiting my sister, brother-in-law, and Caitlin's cousin, but she already has a history of using power naps to avoid actually sleeping so it worked out perfectly.  It was now 10pm, way past her bedtime, and she was COMPLETELY exhausted!  She struggled and cried a little bit, but for the most part just sat there in my lap with a wounded look in her eyes...

Of course, despite the fact that we'd told the clinic that Caitlin was a baby, there was no crib in the room, so as soon as we arrived we'd asked the tech to request one from the hotel.  Fortunately it showed up just as the tech finished putting on all the sensors, so we were able to put Caitlin down right away.  She was really exhausted, so she griped a little about the stuff on her face, but with a little encouragement from mommy (and some gentle patting on the backside) she fell asleep.  We were blown away by how easy it had been, but decided to take advantage of it and curled up in the bed next to her and tried to fall asleep ourselves.

She fussed occasionally, but no more than usual, for the first hour, but around midnight she woke up full force, discovering (now that she'd gotten some rest) that she had stuff stuck to her face and started ripping everything off!  Fortunately the tech had spotted her waking up from the readouts and was in the room before Caitlin was able to do too much damage.  Cherylle and the tech worked together to get everything back on, and after about 20 minutes or so, were able to get her back to sleep.  She woke up a few more times, off and on, throughout the night, but not enough to interrupt the study too much, and never got more than the big breath sensor under her nose to come off...

Around 5 am, the tech came in the room and let us know that she had enough data on Caitlin's sleep patterns, and that we were free to go!  We got all the sensors off, picked up the diaper bag, and headed home, very relieved that it had gone so smoothly.  According to the tech, results usually take around 10 business days, so we should have them in plenty of time for Caitlin's next ENT appointment on Jan 23rd.

I'll try to get another one up with some holiday pics, and maybe even a little about our quick Vegas trip for those of you not on Facebook!  TTFN

Slow to react!

So I've got plenty to talk about, which is not too surprising since it's been like three years since my last post! Caitlin's been cruising like nobody's business, but she's added a few major steps to that - starting with climbing the stairs in our condo, top to bottom! She'd been trying off and on for a few months, but never had the strength to make it more than a stair or two - but about two weeks ago, Cherylle called me while I was upstairs with Evan, and I came around the corner in time to watch her climb the last 8 stairs! The next day I escorted her as she climbed up the stairs, and after making it all the way to the top, she backed back down 2/3 of the way and climbed back to the top! The best part is now she tells us when she's ready to go to bed - right about the same time every night she heads over to the stairs, climbs up a few stairs, then calls me to follow her! It's cute and scary at the same time - scary both because she's climbing stairs, and because it means she's growing up!!


Also, she's been cruising really well on the furniture already, and has been working on walking with her walker and with two hand support both at home and at day care, but she's now getting obsessed with walking places, is walking straighter all the time, and tonight, while she was cruising the front of the couch begging for food from her brother and me, she actually took her hands off and stood on her own for about 2 seconds to clap at something nobody could identify!


She's also picked up a new sign, finally. She's been really great with the sign for "more", and occasionally will use the sign for "bottle" and for "yes", but a few days ago she finally started using the sign for "please" - in her own special way, of course, using both hands down on her belly instead of one hand on the chest, but we get the point!

Also, we've had a few medical advances since then. Caitlin did have an appointment with an ortho specialst thru Kaiser, in order to get the release for OT and PT from California Children's Services, and he seemed really great while we were there. He did a quick examination, explained that while he was not a specialist in dwarfism he'd seen a few LP patients over the years. He did have quite a few patient pictures on the walls with many patients who were much more impacted than Caitlin, so I wasn't too worried. After his exam, he told us that he thought Caitlin was in great shape, was developing well, and had good muscle tone, and asked us what it was that we wanted to know? We explained that what we really needed was a referral from an ortho specialist for the OT and PT, and he immediately grabbed a prescription pad and wrote out a prescription saying "DX Achondroplasia, RX OT and PT as needed" to give to CCS. All well and good, right?

Nope - Karen Bell, our service coordinator from the Early Start program took the scrip to CCS, who promptly informed her that the wouldn't accept a scrip, that they needed a full diagnostic workup from the doctor, which of course they hadn't told us before we got there. Then they claimed that they had followed up with the doctor's office, and said that his notes from the visit stated that Caitlin did not, in fact, need OT and PT, and therefore she was ineligible. Karen has tried to follow up with the Kaiser ortho's office repeatedly, and despite the signed release we've given her, they've refused to cooperate with her. Again, Kaiser can really suck sometimes.

However - we do have a sleep study scheduled for Caits on the 20th of December. We're not really looking forward to it, since we've heard from the many parents in this community who've already gone through the process that it can be miserable, but we're really looking forward to getting the results so that we can clear up the issue of what is causing her to wake up at night. Heck, as much as I snore, and wake without feeling rested, I may try to get myself scheduled for one of these too! Anyway, Caitlin's tubes are on hold until we get the results from the sleep study so if she needs to have her tonsils and adenoids removed we can do all at the same time... We're not looking forward to her getting surgery, but we're really looking forward to her being able to hear better and start having her words take more shape! She's making lots of sounds, and many of them in appropriate places, but most of them don't have any actual distinctness to them since she can't actually hear the sounds we're making very well...

Anyway, to wrap this all up, we may be becoming much more involved in our local chapter soon - more details on that will follow as they become available. Also, we've officially made our deposit for the national conference in New York, so that means we're committed to going! It looks like the important dates for the conference itself are Saturday, July 4, thru Wednesday, July 8, so we'll probably try to stay those days in the conference hotel and then look for a cheaper place to extend our stay a few more days... We'll see how it works out, but we're really looking forward to meeting many more of y'all (even the ones who moved away recently, Kim!!) since the Detroit conference was such an amazing experience.

I'll end this with a few more pics, since those of you who are not on Facebook may not be up to date on what Caitlin has been up to... See y'all again soon!



And, of course, a few of her brother since he's such a great big brother and is also totally frickin' adorable, if I do say so myself :-)